One great full day in Oslo

Today was much better. The jiggling feeling after the train ride was gone and after a night’s sleep I found I could face a new city. We had spied a good breakfast place yesterday and had coffee and a yum pastry, then set off to achieve all the things we had planned. We took umbrellas as an insurance against rain, and were happy we did as when we set off it had obviously been raining during the night - wet pavements and puddles everywhere, but again we were lucky as it didn’t rain at all today - just grey skies, and even a break of blue by late afternoon.

First of all we walked to the sculpture garden - a big attraction here, beautiful gardens, specially now with their autumn glory, and with many sculptures by a famous person whose name I can’t remember, who must have spent his whole life making so many works, or had a workshop of helpers...figures of men, women children in all forms and contortions, in granite...there is a lot of stone here! Anyway, that was fun. Many school children and tourist groups there too.

Then we walked back and found the Nobel Peace museum which was good, and then on to the Resistance museum, which we found was within the fortress and castle complex which was interesting in itself. The Resistance museum we really enjoyed - not the right word really, but was interesting especially as it filled in what we had learned about during talks and visiting towns during the cruise up the coast where the towns felt the main brunt of the nazi occupation.

After that we had a break and sandwich and then found that we were too late for the Viking museum -it was 3.40 and it closed at 4 in October, so we went on to look at the opera house again while the weather was good and before it started to get dark. It is such an amazing building, and I have tried to take photos, but it is difficult to capture. We then returned to the hotel - Amr had a short outing to look at some shops - but a little down time till we set off for dinner.

We had planned to go to a Spanish place that had a sister restaurant we had noticed in Bergen, but when we went there - along a string of restaurants, rather like Barangaroo, alongside the harbour, with ferries, it was too busy, so we gave in and went to Olivia again...I just had salad, and we had a glass of wine. Didn’t feel like much after late lunch. So now back and ready to pack up and fly to Copenhagen tomorrow. Amr’s Apple Watch says that we walked 22 kms today, so that is good!

I am bracing for another unknown city to explore, but everyone says how good Copenhagen is, so hope it won’t be too daunting! We have already found out where to go on the metro from the airport to get to our hotel so that is a good start! We spend 3 nights there, then start the journey home on Tuesday.Read more